How Much Do You Pay for Web Apps?

Before I fell asleep last night, I started thinking about what I’m spending on Web applications. I take advantage of the free levels of apps whenever I can, however, in some cases, I have to give in and pay for the services.

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Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have buyer’s remorse, but I do think I need to get a firm grasp of what Web apps or SaaS’s I have on autopay on my business credit card because it is getting to be too easy to charge these things.

Here is the list of Web apps I’ve been paying for and why I pay for them:

Basecamp – $24/month – to keep track of communications and files with clients.

I began thinking that I should pay more attention to these payments. If the app is really valuable to my business, maybe I should consider paying for a year’s subscription in advance. Often, an annual subscription is discounted so I could save some money.

Then again, it might just be negligible. CafePress, for example, comes out to be $5/month for an annual subscription which would save me $23 for the year. Well, the theory sounded good when I was thinking about it. Still, if I were to subscribe to many more apps and sites, maybe the savings would become more significant.

Sites like Freshbooks and Basecamp don’t offer an annual fee. They use a pay-as-you-go model without committing you to a long term contract. Freshbooks does offer a lump sum payment where you can opt to pay for a number of months in advance but without any discount.

What are you paying on a monthly basis for Web apps and sites? Which ones and what do they do for you?

You should check out Intervals, a web app that does time tracking, task management, document sharing, and invoicing, along with a few other things, and starts at $20/month to manage 10 projects. You could ditch two or three apps, save some money, and have everything in one place.

I discovered that running “free” open source apps took to much of my “free” time. I pay to use backpack, for example. One of my biggest challenges is separating “business” from “personal” usage for tax purposes. Now I think I need to go back through and do the same calculations – but at least the ones I pay for will stick around (what is the biz model for totally free?). I switched to BudURL for business url tracking BECAUSE they bill!

I recently set up a site based on my personal bookmarks on web apps (Vtoolbox) and in doing some of the research found that trying to calculate if “apps by the piece” vs suites are more cost-effective?

$23 a year on your cafepress.com is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you look at those kind of savings across your whole billing. Say you pay $1,252.68 a year for these services and you can save 10% by prepaying from cash (not credit). You’ll save $125 a year which can basically pay for your hosting.

Personally, I pay $70 a year for my BlueHost account and that’s about it. I replaced BaseCamp with a free alternative and now I get more money for coffee and EVE. :)

Jott Pro – $12.95 per month — I pay because I like the longer time for recording notes — a premium upgrade. I’m going to upgrade Evernote, partly because I think the service is terrific and want to support them and partly because I keeping so much info on Evernote, I’m going to need more monthly bandwidth.

WordPress – I used to pay $15/year for this until I started hosting it myself (I like controlling the installation)MailChimp – $15/month for newsletters to clientsRonin – $9/month for invoicing clientsHighrise – again, for managing clients.